


An Uneasy Agreement

by glitterandgin



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Unrequited Love, unrequited nanders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:54:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3478625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitterandgin/pseuds/glitterandgin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nathaniel finds himself stuck with Ser Pounce-a-lot after Anders leaves the Grey Wardens. Neither of them are thrilled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Uneasy Agreement

“Cat,” Nathaniel says, fully aware of the creature’s name and still unwilling to utter it. “Get down from the curtains.”

The curtains in question have been climbed so many times that they appear to be nothing more than a collection of snags. It's amazing the cat can even find enough fabric to climb. The cat looks insufferably smug about its latest accomplishment in the "irritate Nathaniel Howe" challenge.

Nathaniel sighs and walks away. Anders would... no. That line of thought is too painful, still too fresh. It's littered with "what ifs" and "if onlys", and if Nathaniel lets it into his mind, it's unlikely it will ever leave. It's type of thinking that would have shatter his already fractured heart, and he's not sure he'd ever find all the pieces.

He's so busy trying to think of something, _anything_ besides Anders--training the recruits, Oghren's “special brew”--that he doesn't notice when the blighted cat leaps from the curtains onto the bed and urinates.

Nathaniel whips around to reprimand the cat, which glares at him with so much malice that it almost looks human.

Anders will come back. Anders _better_ come back. Nathaniel has half a mind to track the mage down and make him take the cat off his hands. Anders will come back, and then he'll finally get to say everything he'd wanted to before Anders' sudden disappearance. No. That will never happen. Even if Anders does come back, he'll never tell him. It's too risky, and Nathaniel has never been a betting man.

The next day, Nathaniel attempts to feed the cat. The food Anders had prepared ran out the day before, and Nathaniel's pretty sure the cat has no qualms about eating him.

First, he tries a bit of dried fish. He vaguely remembers Anders--Anders smiling, joking, smiling at _him_ \--feeding the cat dried mackerel at one point. With that in mind, he raids the kitchen and presents the fish to the cat with all the begrudging formality of a peace offering.

The cat, in a move that Nathaniel had predicted but hoped wouldn’t happen, gives him a feline approximation of a sneer and walks away.

“You ate it when Anders gave it to you,” Nathaniel grouses, all too aware of the fact that he’s attempting to reason with a cat. Of course, therein lies the problem. Not that the beast is a cat (though that doesn’t help), but that Anders is gone. Anders had served as the rickety bridge between the two of them, and without him, they’re left trying to cross a chasm wider than they’d ever imagined.

To the cook’s extreme displeasure, Nathaniel returns to dig through the kitchen for something else the blighted cat might want. All his offerings are met with the same disdain, and finally Nathaniel gives up for the night. He’s starving, and he doesn’t have time to argue with persnickety cats. His heart clenches at the knowledge that Anders would undoubtedly make a pun about his adjective of choice.

As he’s about to cut his chicken, the cat jumps onto his lap. Claws sharper than any blade he’s ever encountered dig into Nathaniel’s legs as the feline purrs. It would almost be sweet if not for the fact that the cat is blatantly staring at Nathaniel’s dinner.

“You turned it down when I--” he says, then stops. The cat had become hopelessly spoiled in Anders’ care; nothing he can say would change that. Irritation took the foreground in his mind, but in the back there was the knowledge that the cat was probably the closest thing he’d get to having Anders back. Ser Pounce-a-lot seemed to have realized something along those lines, too.

With a sigh that’s mostly faked, Nathaniel cuts off a piece of his chicken and feeds it to Ser Pounce-a-lot. He could live with what he had.

And if he lets Ser Pounce take the extra pillow that night, he’ll never tell. It’s just a temporary agreement until Anders returns, after all.

 

 


End file.
